Drawn in 1914, this large sheet is a study for the sea nymph at the lower right of Halcyone (see comparative image), one of the largest and most ambitious of Draper’s late paintings. Completed in 1915 and exhibited at the Royal Academy that year, the painting, which measures over two metres in length, was acquired from the Academy exhibition by the collector John Hall, one of Draper’s loyal patrons, for his home in Eccleshall in Staffordshire.When Halcyone was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1915, it was accompanied by some lines written by the artist: ‘How Halcyone in her bereavement was transformed by water nymphs, and rejoined her mate in eternal summer in the form of the bird that bears her name.’ The subject is taken from the legend of Ceyx and Halcyone. One of the daughters of Aeolus, the god of the winds, Halcyone (or Alcyone) was distraught over the loss of her husband, King Ceyx of Thessaly, who had drowned while on a sea voyage. Draper’s painting shows Halcyone preparing to throw herself into the sea to join her husband in death. However, the water nymphs took pity on her and transformed her and Ceyx into kingfishers, the birds seen in the painting above the head of Halcyone. Kingfishers (known as halcyones, or halykon, in Greek) were said to have the power to calm the wind and waves while they nested on the sea during the winter solstice. The model for this drawing was a young girl named Ruth Torr, an artist’s model from Clerkenwell in London who, with her elder sister May, posed several times for Draper. The drawing on the verso of the sheet, depicting the upper half of a man’s trousers and what appears to be an artist’s palette, is inscribed Ruth T and may depict Draper himself. The artist is known to have given drawing lessons to some of his models, and it may be supposed that the sketch on the verso is by Ruth Torr, who was about fourteen years old when this drawing was made.

Provenance:Among the contents of the artist’s studio at the time of his death, and stamped with the studio stamp H.J.D. (not in Lugt) on the overlapBy descent in the family of the artistJulian Hartnoll, London, in 2001Private collection, Madrid.